1.
Yes, everything is on YouTube. After listenting to the great rock 'n' roll classic, "Shout" by the Isley Brothers (1959) I suddenly remembered a song that, briefly, meant a good deal to me when I was eight and nine years old: "Little Things Mean A Lot" recorded by Kitty Kallen in 1954. Was it, too, on YouTube? It was! I had never forgotten the song, even though the last time I had heard it was nearly sixty years ago! I hadn't forgotten the words either--tears came to my eyes as I listened to it for the first time in many decades.
2.
Yes, I've reached the age when one begins to read obituaries. Plucking petals from a daisy while reciting 'she loves me, she loves me not,' has morphed into scrolling down the online obituary section of the Times while reciting, 'This one was younger than I, this one was older.' I'm certainly hitting back, but at my age mortality is increasinly better able to connect with its punches. I feel little older than a kid inside, so it's weird to suddenly be transported sixty years back in time, when I actually was young. Yes, seventy-year old kids are fictitious as leprechauns, time tells me, get real. You're nothing but an abstract concept, I say to time, and continue with my seventh decade of youth.
(I suddenly remember taking a walk in Chennai, India, with my sister-in-law Pechu about two years ago. I walk at a fast clip. She advised me to slow down a lot--"After all, you're old now and older people shouldn't walk fast". I didn't say anything; I just doubled my pace.)
Mortality's punches--sometimes they come in the more benign form of Nostalgia's pats on the back. Anyone my age can give many such examples. To me, a major pat on the back came last week during a trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York. This museum has large sections that haven't changed a bit since my first visit there around 1950. My wife's niece (she is now thirty-five but is fixed in my memory when she was two, the time during which I got to know her well during a long trip to India) now has a daughter who is crazy about dinosaurs, so we--my wife Nirmala, my sister-in-law Mridula and I--visited the museum, hoping to find something in the gift shop she would like (we didn't). How well I remember the dinosaur exhibits, which thrilled me so at the age of seven! I collected little statues of the dinosaurs which were available at the gift shop Lovely little bronze replicas; they were not cheaply made as stuff you get these days--does anyone remember them? I remember that they came in two sizes; the largest ones cost two dollars apiece--I recall thinking how expensive that was--Would I ever be able to save up for a two-dollar Trachodon which I just had to have? After visiting these gigantic skeletal friends, we went to the first floor to get to the Hayden Planetarium. A walk through the "Hall of the American Indians" really hit me--it hadn't changed a bit. But the poor little kid who walked through its long corridor so many times is no more. But that attack of nostalgia did not last. "Little Things Mean a Lot" however, struck a far deeper chord.
3.
YouTube has everthing, but Google has everything squared. I knew I would find out more about Kitty Kallen and her hit if I googled her, and, sure enough, there was a little article on Wikipedia. She had toured with big bands during the 1940s. Her one great hit was "Little Things Mean a Lot." She married, had one son who is now a law professor. And she is still alive at 90.
4.
The fact that her hit was a childhood favorite is proof, alas! that I'm not even young enough to be a baby boomer. This song was one of the last hits of the big band era, just as I was one of the last births of the World War ll generation. Listening to it now, I hear it very differently. It is a ballad, sung admirably by a female crooner, with big-band orchestration. The backbeat--the drumbeat on the third beat of a four beat measure, whcih is the hallmark of rock 'n' roll, would soon change music forever.
5.
After sixty years, I saw a picture for the first time of Kitty Kallen as she was then. What a knockout!
6.
The song played a big role in my life. I don't know where I first heard it. My grandparents, who lived downstairs (they owned the house) had an RCA Victor console which included a TV (13 inch screen) and a phonograph, bought in 1949. We didn't get a TV until 1954, the year when Kittly recorded the tune. Did I have a 78rpm record of it? Did I hear it on the Hit Parade, a very popular TV show at the time during which Snooky Lanson, among others, sang the popular hits of the day?. I'm not sure, but I had the song memorized, which indicates that I must have had a recording of it, but if I did, no memory of it has remained.
7.
The song is so important to me, not only because it was perhaps the first beloved song in an (eventually) music-crazed person's memory bank, but because it brings back to me the first crush I had on a girl-well, maybe the second, but that's another story. Her name is (or was) Kathleen Manet. She had just moved into our rough working-class neighborhood when the song came out. We became friends. We sang this song together many times--along with the current hits of Theresa Brewer. I was very fond of Kathleen, and was just beginning to realize that my fondness for her was differnt from the pleasure I took in the company of my friend Walter and other boys.
How fond I was of her is indicated by another memory. My uncle used his savings to buy a simple little house in Forked River, NJ. (He wanted to retire there eventually--but the universe, alas! had other plans for him. He died from stomach cancer at the age of 60.) Our family spent a month there in 1954--or was it 1955? When I left, I made Kathleen promise me that she would write every day. I wrote many times, but recieved no letter. Every day I went with my parents to the post office to pick up the mail--no letter, no letter, no letter. I felt very sad. When we got back, I asked her, no doubt with hurt in my voice, what happened? Oh, I must have had the wrong address, Forked Bend, wasn't it? she said, in a very unconvincing way. I can still feel the disappointment. I was Pip, she was Estella; my Great Expectations had been crushed.
Another related memory comes to mind-- I, with my uncle's permission, invited her for a weekend at his Forked River bungalow. ( I don't think she ever came; I'd be sure to have some memory of it. ) The walls of the little house were unfinished; guests wrote messages and thank-you notes on the cardboard covering the walls. (Yes, this was the working-class version of those fancy guest books found in vacation homes everywhere.) I remember writing a little love note on the bathroom wall, right next to the toilet. Among other (forgotten) things, I told her how happy I was that she would soon visit. When family members saw it they laughed; I was very embarrassed. My brother especially did not let me forget how ridiculous it was to write from the heart while one's rear is on the toilet.
8.
We lived in a very rough neigborhood. We didn't know we were poor, but I did know that Kathleen was poorer than us. (To give you an example of the type of neighborhood we lived in--There was a somewaht dilapidated three-floor walk-up next door, which had two flats of four railrood rooms each on every floor. This was a little version of the welfare hotels that came later. On the second floor lived The McCormicks with their six children. The father was a policeman--he had the reputation of being a very corrupt one; his wife, perhaps thirty-five, looked like sixty--and not my kind of sixty. Later on we found out they had seven children--the last child, discovered by the authorities when she was about six, had never been taken outside the house--and apparently had remained stark naked since the day she was born! She was removed from the home--we didn't know what that meant, but we knew what it meant some time later, when we learned that the eldest boy had been taken away...to jail.)
Kathleen lived on the fourth floor of a walk-up one block from my house. She lived with (as I understand now) a very overburdened single mother, who probably had difficulty paying the rent. Her mother smacked her around a lot. One time, when I witnessed her mother kicking her, yes, kicking her, I was outraged. How could one do that to my little girlfriend? I told my friend Walter Wilczeswiki about it. (Walter was my best friend; a poem I wrote about his death in 1977 was recently published by the University of Virginia's magazine, Hospital Drive. (If you are interested in reading it, here is the link: http://hospitaldrive.med.virginia.edu/hospital-drive/issue-7-winterspring-2012/homage-to-walter-wilczewski/ or simply google the title of the poem, Homage to Walter Wliczewski.) ) I told my friend about Kathleen's troubles in confidence. Yet Walter--this was the only time he ever did --betrayed my confidence. He told Kathleen, "Tom says your mother doesn't treat you right." Nobody likes to hear that about her own mother. Kathleen, crying, a tear of bitterness alternating with a tear of anger, couldn't believe I would ever say such a thing and asked me whether it was true. I stammered; I was never good at lying. I felt terrible for her. I also remember looking at her right eye, which was made of glass--how she lost her eye I probably once knew-- but I can't remember if there were tears there, too.
A little while later, Kathleen, who had moved to Jersey City with her mother perhaps six months earlier, moved again. And exited from my life forever.
When Katleen left, I never listened to Kitty Kallen's song again, until now.
9.
Another reason that this song had such an effect on me is that it illustrates my love for music even at the age of 8. Yes, I wanted piano lessons, but I come from a very unmusical family. At age 15, I was able to get hold of an old spinet and briefly took some lessons from a good person but a bad teacher. But I finally did something about it--at age 59, I began lessons with a good teacher, and, at nearly 67, am still taking lessons from her. I will always be a rank amateur, but there is lots to be said about rank amateurs. I am able to play music with friends; I started a musical group and attend other musical groups; I go to nursing homes to play and conduct singalongs, etc. My advice to older people with regrets of not having done something that they wanted to do all their lives: stop complaining and do it now.
10.
Yes, the song, after sixty years, resulted in an acute earworm infection. (An 'earworm,' a word that comes from the German Ohrwurm, indicates a musical phrase that keeps repeating in one's head. It can drive you crazy.) But along with the earworm came a great consolation: for a while I was a kid again, singing a favorite song along with a cute little friend, whom I had just about completely forgotten for decades, along with the song.
11.
The lyrics to "Little Things Mean a Lot" are not worthy of Hammerstein--not to mention Cole Porter. Still they are adequate and the music is sweet. It's about a young woman who tells her love, "You don't have to give me diamonds or pearls/ champagne, sables or such/ I never was much for diamonds or pearls, for honestly, honey, they just cost money." Instead she wants the little things that mean a lot, because they indicate deep love: "Blow me a kiss from across the room/ say I look nice when I'm not; touch my hair when you pass my chair/ little things mean a lot." It's a sentimental song, true, but a very effective one. And I love Ms. Kallen's performance. She sings the song in a very convincing, intimate way, without any exaggeration for cheap, emotional effects. Her phrasing is excellent--an example: the way she sings "heart": in the phrase, "give me your heart to rely on." She sings this word more softly and, with a subtle emphasis, indicating that this is what she really wants--deep, unconditional affection. The intimacy of her voice is striking--you feel as if she's singing directly to you. I suppose we felt some of that even then--thanks to Ms. Kallen's superb performance. After listening to the song on YouTube a few times (I couldn't listen too many times, or else I would have been driven mad by my earworm,.) I went right to the piano and was able to play the tune by ear. Here is a link to me, amateur pianist that I am, performing it: Hope you are listening somewhere, Kathleen! (Note: I know I'm far from a good pianist; I do believe, however, that there are appropriate places for amateur musicians, that is. everywhere, including here.)
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_edit?ns=1&video_id=eiHbByTPPiw
12.
Thank you, Kittly Kallen--You brought back many memories to me. The resulting feelings of love, tenderness, nostalgia, combined with the realization of how fleeting a lifespan is, have deepned my appreiciaion of being human. I am glad you are alive; I wish you years of additional happiness.
And to you, Kathleen Manet, though I can't google you or find you on YouTube, I hope you, too, are alive and well somewhere! I hope your mother found a good provider or got a good job, and took you out of poverty soon after she took you out of my life. I know the statistics; the chances that you rose from a very difficult situation are not good. I did, though; dear dear Kathleen, I hope you did too.
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